14 National Merit Scholarships awarded

Fourteen Orange County students have been selected to receive corporate National Merit Scholarships this year.

Scholarship recipient Maxwell Davitt, 18, of Sage Hill School in Newport Coast was one of 15,000 finalists in the nation and one of 1,000 to receive a corporate scholarship awarded by roughly 200 companies, foundations and businesses.

To become a finalist, students must be children of employees, residents of the same city the company serves or planning to enter the same field of study as the company.

Davitt, a Huntington Beach resident, learned he'd won the National Merit Pepsico Foundation Inc. Scholarship in a text from his mother, who works at PepsiCo Inc.

At the time of his application, he was considering a career in science or research but has since switched to computer science after taking an Advanced Placement class in the subject. He hasn't decided which college to attend.

“It's a new frontier, and it's like a puzzle to program,” Davitt said. “I could sit there and do a four-hour project start to finish and not care I was working for four hours. It just flows.”

The corporate National Merit Scholarships provide a range of funding – some offer a single payment of $2,500 to $5,000, while others give annual stipends of $500 to $10,000. The corporate scholarships can be used at any accredited U.S. college or university.

In all, about 8,000 National Merit scholarships are expected to be awarded this year, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

The names of winners are released in waves, with the winners of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarships coming May 8, and more winners announced May 29 and July 15.

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